It

way half a mile dryin in the sun thanks to what you done, but you can be pretty sure that there ain’t shit stickin to anyone’s ceiling because of it.

“But as for the gray water… well, there’s no pumps for gray water. That all runs downhill in what the engineer boyos call gravity drains. And I’ll bet you know where all them gravity drains end up, don’t you, big boy?”

“Up there,” Ben said. He pointed to the area behind the dam, the area they had in large part submerged. He did this without looking up. Big tears were beginning to course slowly down his cheeks. Mr Nell pretended not to notice.

“That’s right, my large young friend. All them gravity drains feed into streams that feed into the upper Barrens. In fact, a good many of them little streams that come tricklin down are gray water and gray water only, comin out of drams you can’t even see, they’re so deep-buried in the underbrush. The shit goes one way and everythin else goes the other, God praise the clever mind o man, and did it ever cross yer minds that you’d spent the whole live-long day paddlin around in Derry’s pee an old wash-water?”

Eddie suddenly began to gasp and had to use his aspirator.

“What you did was back water up into about six o the eight central Catch-basins that serve Witcham and Jackson and Kansas and four or five little streets that run between em.” Mr Nell fixed Bill Denbrough with a dry glance. “One of em serves yer own hearth an home, young Master Denbrough. So there we are, with sinks that won’t drain, washin-machines that won’t drain, outflow pipes pourin merrily into cellars-”

Ben let out a dry barking sob. The others turned toward him and then looked away. Mr Nell put a large hand on the boy’s shoulder. It was callused and hard, but at the moment it was also gentle.

“Now, now. No need to take on, big boy. Maybe it ain’t that bad, at least not yet; could be I exaggerated just a mite to make sure you took my point. They sent me down to see if a tree blew down across the stream. That happens from time to time. There’s no need for anyone but me and you five to know it wasn’t just that. We’ve got more important things to worry about in town these days than a little backed-up water. I’ll say on my report that I located the blowdown and some boys came along and helped me shift it out o the way o the water. Not that I’ll mention ye by name. Ye’Il not be gettin any citations for dam-building in the Bar’ns.”

He surveyed the five of them. Ben was furiously wiping his eyes with his handkerchief; Bill was looking thoughtfully at the dam; Eddie was holding his aspirator in one hand; Stan stood close by Richie with one hand on Richie’s arm, ready to squeeze-hard-if Richie should show the slightest sign of having anything to say other than thank you very much.

“You boys got no business at all in a dirty place like this,” Mr Nell went on. “There’s probably sixty different kinds o disease breeding down here.” Breeding came out braidin, as in what a girl may do with her hair in the morning. “dump down one way, streams full of piss an gray water, muck an slop, bugs an brambles, quick-mud… you got no business at all in a dirty place like this. Four clean city parks for you boyos to be playin ball in all the day long and I catch you down here. Jaysus Christ!”

“Wuh-Wuh-We l-l-l-like it d-d-down h-here,” Bill said suddenly and defiantly. “Wh-When w-w-we cuh-hum down h-here, nuh-ho-hobody gives us a-a-any stuh-stuh-hatic.”

“What’d he say?” Mr Nell asked Eddie.

“He said when we come down here nobody gives us any static,” Eddie said. His voice was thin and whistling, but it was also unmistakably firm. “And he’s right. When guys like us go to the park and say we want to play baseball, the other guys say sure, you want to be second base or third?”

Richie cackled. “Eddie Gets Off A Good One! And… You Are There!”

Mr Nell swung his head to look at him.

Richie shrugged. “sorry. But he’s right. And Bill’s right, too. We like it down here.”

Richie thought Mr Nell would become angry again at that, but the white-haired cop surprised him-surprised them all-with a smile. “Ayuh,” he said. “I liked it down here meself as a boy, so I did. And I’ll not forbid ye. But hark to what I’m tellin you now.” He leveled a finger at them and they all looked at him soberly. “If ye come down here to play ye come in a gang like ye are now. Together. Do you understand me?”

They nodded.

That means together all the time. No hide-an-seek games where yer split up one an one an one. You all know what’s goin on in this town. All the same, I don’t forbid you to come down here, mostly because ye’d be down here anyway. But for yer own good, here or anywhere around, gang together.” He looked at Bill. “do you disagree with me, young Master Bill Denbrough?”

“N-N-No, sir,” Bill said. “W-We’ll stay tuh-tuh-tuh-”

“That’s good enough for me,” Mr Nell said. “Yer hand on it.”

Bill stuck out his hand and Mr Nell shook it.

Richie shook off Stan and stepped forward.

“Sure an begorrah, Mr Nell, yer a prince among men, y’are! A foine man! A foine, foine man!” He stuck out his own hand, seized the Irishman’s huge paw, and flagged it furiously, grinning all the time. To the bemused Mr Nell the boy looked like a hideous parody of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“Thank you, boy,” Mr Nell said, retrieving his hand. “Ye want to work on that a bit. As of now, ye sound about as Irish as Groucho Marx.”

The other boys laughed, mostly in relief. Even as he was laughing, Stan shot Richie a reproachful look: Grow up, Richie!

Mr Nell shook hands all around, gripping Ben’s last of all.

“Ye’ve nothing to be ashamed of but bad judgment, big boy. As for that there… did you see how to do it in a book?”

Ben shook his head.

“Just figured it out?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well if that don’t beat Harry! Ye’Il do great things someday, I’ve no doubt. But the Barrens isn’t the place to do em.” He looked around thoughtfully. “No great thing will ever be done here. Nasty place.” He sighed. “Tear it down, dear boys. Tear it right down. I believe I’ll just sit me down in the shade o this bush here and bide a wee as you do it.” He looked ironically at Richie as he said this last, as if inviting another manic outburst.

“Yes, sir,” Richie said humbly, and that was all. Mr Nell nodded, satisfied, and the boys fell to work, once again turning to Ben-this time to show them the quickest way to tear down what he had shown them how to build. Meanwhile, Mr Nell removed a brown bottle from inside his tunic and helped himself to a large gulp. He coughed, then blew out breath in an explosive sigh and regarded the boys with watery, benign eyes.

“And what might ye have in yer bottle, sor?” Richie asked from the place where he was standing knee-deep in the water.

“Richie, can’t you ever shut up?” Eddie hissed.

“This?” Mr Nell regarded Richie with mild surprise and looked at the bottle again. It had no label of any kind on it. “This is the cough medicine of the gods, my boy. Now let’s see if you can bend yer back anywhere near as fast as you can wag yer tongue.”

3

Bill and Richie were walking up Witcham Street together later on. Bill was pushing Silver; after first building and then tearing down the dam, he simply did not have the energy it would have taken to get Silver up to cruising speed. Both boys were dirty, dishevelled, and pretty well used up.

Stan had asked them if they wanted to come over to his house and play Monopoly or Parcheesi or something, but none of them wanted to. It was getting late. Ben, sounding tired and depressed, said he was going to go home and see if anybody had returned his library books. He had some hope of this, since the Derry Library insisted on writing in the borrower’s street address as well as his name on each book’s pocket card. Eddie said he was going to watch The Rock Show on TV because Neil Sedaka was going to be on and he wanted to see if Neil Sedaka was a Negro. Stan told Eddie not to be so stupid, Neil Sedaka was white, you could tell he was white just listening to him. Eddie claimed you couldn’t tell anything by listening to them; until last year he had been positive Chuck Berry was white, but when he was on Bandstand he turned out to be a Negro.

“My mother still thinks he’s white, so that’s one good thing,” Eddie said. “If she finds out he’s a Negro, she probably won’t let me listen to his songs anymore.”

Stan bet Eddie four funnybooks that Neil Sedaka was white, and the two of them set off together for Eddie’s house to settle the issue.

And here were Bill and Richie, headed in a direction which would bring them to Bill’s house after awhile, neither of them talking much. Richie found himself thinking about Bill’s story of the picture that had turned its head and winked. And in spite of his tiredness, an idea came to him. It was crazy… but it also held a certain attraction.

“Billy me boy,” he said. “Let’s stop for awhile. Take five. I’m dead.”

“No such l-l-luck,” Bill said, but he stopped, laid Silver carefully down on the edge of the green Theological Seminary lawn, and the two boys sat on the wide stone steps which led up to the rambling red Victorian structure.

“What a d-d-day,” Bill said glumly. There were dark purplish patches under his eyes. His face looked white and used. “You better call your house when w-we get to muh-mine. So your f-folks don’t go b-b-bananas.”

“Yeah. You bet. Listen, Bill-”

Richie paused for a moment, thinking about Ben’s mummy, Eddie’s leper, and whatever Stan had almost told them. For a moment something swam in his own mind, something about that Paul Bunyan statue out by the City Center. But that had only been a dream, for God’s sake.

He pushed away such irrelevant thoughts and plunged.

“Let’s go up to your house, what do you say? Take a look in Georgie’s room. I want to see that picture.”

Bill looked at Richie, shocked. He tried to speak but could not; his stress was simply too great. He settled for shaking his head violently.

Richie said, “You heard Eddie’s story. And Ben’s. Do you believe what they said?”

“I don’t nuh-nuh-know. I th-hink they m-m-must have sub-seen suh-homething.”

“Yeah. Me too. All the kids that’ve been killed around here, I think all of them would have had stories to tell, too. The only difference between Ben and Eddie and those other kids is that Ben and Eddie didn’t get caught.”

Bill raised his eyebrows but showed no great surprise. Richie had supposed Bill would have taken it that far himself. He couldn’t talk so good, but he was no dummy.

“So now dig on this awhile, Big Bill,” Richie said. “A guy could dress up in a clown suit and kill kids. I don’t know why he’d want to, but nobody can tell why crazy people do things, right?”

“Ruh-Ruh-Ruh-”

“Right. It’s not that much different than the Joker in a Batman funnybook.” Just hearing his ideas out loud excited Richie. He wondered briefly if he was actually trying to prove something or just throwing up a smokescreen of words so he could see that room, that picture. In the end it probably didn’t matter. In the end maybe just seeing Bill’s eyes light up with their own excitement was enough.

“B-B-But wh-wh-where does the pih-hicture fit i-i-in?”

“What do you think, Billy?”

In a low voice, not looking at Richie, Bill said he didn’t think it had anything to do with the murders. “I think it was Juh-Juh-Georgie’s g-ghost.”